Max Abramovitz, 96

Architect lauded for design of Lincoln Center hall

September 18, 2004|By New York Times News Service.

NEW YORK — Max Abramovitz, 96, the architect who designed Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center and also had a hand in the building of the UN complex and several well-known Midtown skyscrapers, died Sunday at his home in Pound Ridge, N.Y.

Mr. Abramovitz was born in Chicago and received his early training there, but it was in New York City, in a long partnership with Wallace Harrison, that he made a significant contribution to postwar modernist architecture.

Though he worked on a huge array of projects in his career, from embassies to college campuses to the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Va., the Philharmonic Hall, later renamed Avery Fisher Hall, has remained the most prominent and emblematic of Mr. Abramovitz's designs. At the time it opened in 1962, the first of Lincoln Center's five buildings to be completed, its tapered neo-Classical-style columns and glass-walled interior were praised by Ada Louise Huxtable in The New York Times as "impressive and handsome," especially in the way they worked at night as the hall filled with concertgoers.

"From the outside, the drama of light, movement and color, seen through the glass walls, enclosed by the great tapered frame, makes the structure a spectacular success in action," she wrote.

But the building later became a lightning rod for criticism, in part because its acoustics were almost immediately found to be lacking by members of the Philharmonic, who described it variously as a "pinball machine," a "television studio" and "raw alcohol instead of a vintage wine."

For much of his career, Mr. Abramovitz worked in the shadow of Harrison, his powerful, well-connected partner, who was close to the Rockefeller family and became a kind of master planner of the city's complexes, overseeing the design of Rockefeller Center, the United Nations and Lincoln Center.

Mr. Abramovitz, the son of working-class Romanian immigrants, met Harris for the first time in 1931 and joined his firm as an associate in 1935. He quickly became a partner, and over the next three decades, the two men collaborated on a number of well-known Manhattan skyscrapers, including the Mobil Building, Corning Glass, Time & Life, McGraw-Hill, Exxon, and Celanese. He was also the deputy director of planning for the UN complex and later served as the master planner for Brandeis University, in addition to designing U.S. Embassies in Havana and Rio de Janeiro. During World War II, he built airfields in China for Gen. Claire Chennault's Flying Tigers and received the Legion of Merit.